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Villains, Victims and Morals in Contemporary Chinese Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Joe C. Huang
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Extract

Novels reflect social realities at given times and under given conditions. When the direct survey method cannot be applied to the study of Chinese society, novels constitute one of the available sources from which useful information concerning the structure, order and conditions of society and interpersonal relations may be inferred. However, the difficulty of reconstructing the social conduct of Chinese people from such elusive source materials is enhanced since Communist novels reflect less the realities as they are than the realities as they should be. The theory of the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism demands that the plots and characters must be “romanticized” to give a picture of the society corresponding to the needs of ideology. Even if this is so, the stories still have to be based on social realities for the readers to appreciate them. A somewhat modified interpretation holds that romanticization is based on the foundation of realism. It is from the discernment of this element of realism in Chinese Communist fiction that we may attempt to reconstruct the nature of Chinese society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 46 , June 1971 , pp. 331 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1971

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References

1. Hsia, T. A., “Twenty Years After the Yenan Forum” and “Heroes and Hero-worship in Chinese Communist Fiction,” The China Quarterly, No. 13 (01 – 03 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. The officially sanctioned formula for depicting villains is technical rather than normative. The role of negative characters is confined to serving as contrast to the principal hero. Therefore, they should not be portrayed as arrogant or in domineering positions. Nothing, however, is said about what constitutes negative behaviour. See “Striving to Create Brilliant Images of Proletarian Heroes,” China Reconstructs, special issue on “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,” 02 1970.Google Scholar

3. Pin, Liang, “Man-t'an hung-ch'i p'u ti ch'uang-tso” (“Rambling Talks Concerning the Creation of Keep the Red Flag Flying”), Hung-ch'i p'u (Keep the Red Flag Flying) (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1959), p. 22.Google Scholar

4. Ou-yang Shan is said to have made these remarks at a Kwangtung provincial meeting of creative writers in 1959. They were disclosed in a ta-tzupao published by the Kwangtung chapter of the Chinese Writers Association according to Hsing-tao jih-pao (Hong Kong) 13 10, 1966.Google Scholar

5. It is difficult to gather biographical information about the four authors, but we have at least some sketchy knowledge of their past Liang Pin joined the Communist Youth League in 1927, at the age of 13, and has worked since as writer, propagandist and journalist for the Party. Chou Erh-fu went to Yenan in 1938 as a leftist writer and studied Mao's “Forum Talks” while working in the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei base area. Liu Ch'ing joined the Communist Party in 1936 and went to Yenan in 1938. Ou-yang Shan, according to my friend Edward Chan who knows Ou-yang personally, sat in the front row when Mao delivered his “Forum Talks.” This is supported by a Kwangtung Writers Association tatzu-pao which charged that Ou-yang Shan refused to reform himself and considered himself a Yenanite who no longer needed ideological remoulding. The content of this wall-poster, which appeared in early October 1966, was reported in Hsing-tao jih-pao, 19 10 1966.Google Scholar

6. Mao is said to have made the observation that “The use of the novel to carry on anti-Party activities is a great innovation” at the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1962. See “Ch'üan-min wen-i heh-ch'i hsia ti ch'an-p'in – hai-jen ti tu-yo, sha-jen ti hsiungch'i” (“The Product of All-People Literature Black Banner – Harmful Poison, Murderous Weapon”), Wen-hsüeh chan pao (Literary Fighting Bulletin), 7 06 1967Google Scholar; also “Shih-san-pu ta tu-ts'ao tsai na-li?” (“Where Are the Thirteen Great Poisonous Weeds?”) Feng lei pao (Wind and Thunder Journal), 23 05 1967Google Scholar.

When these four novels were first published reactions from the leadership, critics and the masses ranged from warm applause to cool tolerance. Such different reactions may imply that they represent a cross-section of samples which can be used to gauge the perceptions, feelings and ideas of Chinese novelists. During the Cultural Revolution, Keep the Red Flag Flying was condemned for describing the class struggle under the wrong leadership of Wang Ming. The repudiation of Morning in Shanghai was on the grounds that it was “a black specimen advocating the capitulation of the proletarian class under the ferocious counter-attack of the capitalists.” Three Family Lane and Bitter Struggle were denounced for spreading petty bourgeois norms and values. Only Ch'ing', Lius The BuildersGoogle Scholar has remained free from any attacks.

7. Ou-yang Shan planned to write a five-volume novel under the general title of A Generation of Noble Spirits, but published only the first two, San chia hsiang (Three Family Lane) (Peking: Writers Publishing House, 1960)Google Scholar and K'u tou (Bitter Struggle) (Canton: People's Publishing House, 1962)Google Scholar. No English translation is available; however, two instalments covering the first 15 chapters may be found in Chinese Literature, Nos. 5–6 (1961).Google Scholar

8. Pin, Liang's Hung-ch'i p'uGoogle Scholar, translated by Yang, Gladys under the title Keep the Red Flag Flying, was first published by the Chinese Youth Publishing House in 01 1958Google Scholar. The copy I use is a revised edition published by the People's Literature Publishing House, September 1959. Po huo chi (Sowing the Flames) (Peking: Writers Publishing House, 1963)Google Scholar, unavailable in English, is the second of a planned six-volume saga. An excerpt from this volume covering Chaps. 14–18 (pp. 150–215), entitled “A Tale of the Green Woods,” may be found in Chinese Literature, No. 3 (1961)Google Scholar. The third volume, Chan k'ou fu (Fighting the Invaders), is reported to have been serialized in Hopei Literature since 01 1962Google Scholar, but I have been unable to trace a copy of this journal.

9. See the cover blurb of Three Family Lane and also Yen, Chao (Huang Ch'iu-yün), “Ke-ming ch'un-ch'iu ti hsü-ch'ü – hsi tu San chia hsiang” (“Prelude to a Revolutionary Story – After Happily Reading Three Family Lane”), Wen-yi pao, No. 2 (1962), p. 5.Google Scholar

10. Kuei, Ts'ai, “Chou ping hsing-hsiang chi ch'i-t'a – kuan-yü San chia hsiang ho K'u tou ti p'ing-chia wen-t'i” (“The Image of Chou Ping and Other Problems – Concerning the Evaluation of Three Family Lane and Bitter Struggle”), Wenhsüeh p'ing-lun (Literary Criticism), No. 2 (4 04 1964), p. 66Google Scholar. The attack on Ou-yang Shan initiated by this article and continued throughout 1964 may be viewed as a prelude to the Cultural Revolution.

11. Tse-tung, Mao, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art,” Collected Works (Peking), Vol. IV, p. 86Google Scholar. This is of course not Mao's original idea but a reiteration of orthodox Marxist theory of society.

12. Exploitation by the landlords is defined as “the form of land rent, plus money lending, hiring of labor, or the simultaneous carrying on of industrial commercial enterprises.” See “How to Analyze Class Status in the Countryside,” in Blaustein, Albert P. (ed.), Fundamental Legal Documents of Communist China (New Jersey: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1962), p. 292Google Scholar, also in Chen, Theodore H. E. (ed.), The Chinese Communist Regime: Documents & Commentary (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 204Google Scholar. This document was first promulgated by the Democratic Central Government in Juichin, Kiangsi Province, in 1933 and reaffirmed by the Government Administration Council of the Central People's Government on 4 August 1950.

13. Keep the Red Flag Flying, p. 92Google Scholar, Yang, , p. 98.Google Scholar

14. Ch, Liu'ing's Ch'uang yeh shih, Vol. 1 (Peking: Chinese Youth Publishing House, 1960)Google Scholar was translated into English under the title The Builders (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964) by Shapiro, SidneyGoogle Scholar. Only two excerpts from the second of this planned four-volume novel appeared: “Ju tang” (“Joining the Party”), Shanghai Literature, No. 12 (5 12 1960), pp. 3–13Google Scholar and “Liang Sheng-pao yü Hsu Kai-hsia,” Shou-hu (Harvest), No. 1 (1964), pp. 16–29, 52Google Scholar. For some reason Liu Ch'ing has not published the remainder of the long novel, though he has never been criticized even at the most frenetic moments of the Cultural Revolution.

15. This is my view. Other commentators on The Builders classify Kuo in the same category as the rich peasant Yao.

16. Pin, Liang, in Hung-chi p'u, p. 23.Google Scholar

17. For footnote 17 see p. 343.

17. Erh-fu, Chou, Shanghai ti tsao-ch'en, Vol. I (Peking: Writers Publishing House, 1958)Google Scholar, translated into English as Morning in Shanghai (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1962) by Barnes, A. C.Google Scholar. Vol. II (Peking: Writers Publishing House, 1962) is unavailable in English.

18. Morning in Shanghai, p. 187Google Scholar, Barnes, , pp. 231–232.Google Scholar

19. Morning in Shanghai was rather coolly received from the very beginning, and only three short reviews appeared in the literary journals. During the Cultural Revolution it was condemned as a “black specimen advocating the abdication of the proletariat.” It was charged with selling the illegal commodity of capitalist's “merit in exploitation,” ignoring the effect of Communist leadership, and of slandering and distorting the image of the working class by describing their surrender in front of the capitalists' ferocious attack. See “Where Are the Thirteen Great Poisonous Weeds?” Feng lei pao.

20. The Builders, p. 332Google Scholar, Shapiro, , p. 382.Google Scholar

21. Ibid. p. 333, Shapiro, p. 382.

22. See a quotation from Chou Yang in Birch, Cyril, “Fiction of the Yenan Period,” The China Quarterly, No. 4 (10-12 1960), p. 5.Google Scholar

23. Wen-yuan, Yao, “Chung-kuo nung-ts'un she-hui-chu-i ke-ming shih – tu Ch'uang yeh shih” (“A Story of Socialist Revolution in the Chinese Village – After Reading The Builders'”), Tsai ch'ien-chin ti tao-lu shang (On the Road to Progress) (Shanghai: People's Literature Publishing House, 1965), pp. 299–300Google Scholar. Such a rigid view perhaps explains why Yao rose from his relative obscurity to great importance in the Cultural Revolution.

24. Nan-an, Shih's Shui hu chuanGoogle Scholar has two English translations: Water Martin by Jackson, J. H.Google Scholar and All Men Are Brothers by Buck, Pearl S.Google Scholar. The tale of Golden Lotus occupies considerable space from Ch. XXIII to Ch. XXVI.